The state criminal police offices in Germany have extensive weapons collections with thousands of weapons and hundreds of kilos of ammunition that are used for forensic science and training. However, the extent and use of these collections vary greatly between the federal states, as a request from the German Press Agency to the state criminal police offices shows.
Last month, the Ministry of the Interior in Saxony-Anhalt announced that the State Criminal Police Office there had been errors in the transfer of weapons and ammunition to the comparative weapons collection since 2019. For many weapons and ammunition, the necessary permits or orders were not available.
As a result, around 69,000 pieces of ammunition were destroyed, and the Interior Committee of the State Parliament has since been examining the comparative weapons collection. According to a spokesman, the State Criminal Police Office of Saxony-Anhalt still had around 226,000 pieces of ammunition in storage – many times more than what other federal states have in stock. The opposition fears that weapons or ammunition could fall into the wrong hands.
In other federal states, between 700 and 4,300 pieces of ammunition are stored. In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, too, the ammunition collection, with almost 4,000 pieces, is larger than the national average. Bavaria stated that it keeps several hundred kilos of ammunition for training purposes and for so-called comparative firings.
According to their own information, the State Criminal Police Offices in Lower Saxony (9,400 objects) and Bavaria (8,000) have large weapon collections. In addition to firearms, these include similar items such as toy, hunting or military weapons. These comparison objects are intended to be used, among other things, to determine weapon models of weapons or weapon parts that have been seized or only shown in photos, said a spokesman for the State Criminal Police Office in Hesse. A direct comparison of collection weapons with seized weapons serves to track down possible manipulations.
North Rhine-Westphalia said that the weapons collection there is used daily to prepare forensic reports. Without such a collection, it would not be possible to carry out tasks in this area.
The range of weapons stored between the individual federal states is large. In Thuringia, for example, there are significantly fewer weapons (1,700 objects) than in Lower Saxony and Bavaria. In other federal states, there are between 4,800 weapons (North Rhine-Westphalia) and 5,700 weapons (Saxony-Anhalt).